


Moment of Truth

by luxshine



Category: Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, Popslash
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-21
Updated: 2011-03-21
Packaged: 2017-10-17 04:50:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/173077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luxshine/pseuds/luxshine





	Moment of Truth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Milosflaca](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Milosflaca).



Howie had been against the Manband show almost since the day when Chris told him “Rich called me the other day.” It wasn’t that he didn’t want Chris doing something –anything- besides doing parties at his home and calling Howie morosely at 2:00 a.m in the morning because he missed the guys, he missed Howie and he was horny, though not necessarily in that order. It wasn’t even that he was really worried about Chris’s reputation, he couldn’t really tell Chris not to do it since Howie himself was now a member of the selection board for the new Menudo.

No, the real reason was that, once again, Chris was going to be with a group of guys who weren’t Howie.

And it might be childish, and it might be silly after all those years, but Howie still thought some days that their lives would’ve been much better if he and Chris had managed to be in the same group together.

Maybe, he mused some days, usually after hanging up on Chris after those 2:00 a.m. calls, Chris wouldn’t be so adamant on keeping their relationship a deep secret.

After Lance came out, Chris had become even more paranoid than usual that someone would find out that they had been dating, on and off, more or less since Chris and Dani broke up. Or, even worse in Chris’s eyes, that they had dated briefly after college, before Howie joined the Backstreet Boys.

That had been the reason of their last fight. Howie had finally had enough of Chris’s excuses and had yelled the words that now he regretted with all his heart.

“Sometimes, I think I would’ve better off with Lance! At least he isn’t ashamed to be seen with his boyfriend!”

To Howie’s horror, Chris hadn’t answered him; he just turned around and left. That had been a week before they started filming Manband at Chris’s house, and even when Chris had forgiven Howie, as was apparent by the many phone calls, Chris himself was yet to be seen in person. Every time Howie asked Chris if they could see each other and talk, Chris had a good excuse not to show up. Manband, going to watch Joey perform in Dancing with the Stars, going to see Lance perform in Hairspray, Manband’s continuous advertisement, and, to Howie’s despair, Chris even seemed to have memorized the Backstreet Boys’ agenda. No matter how much Howie tried to see his lover face to face, Chris was avoiding him.

Of course made Howie even more adamant about getting to see Chris. But it was hard not to convince himself that Chris was probably getting outside help when every time Howie made the time to go and actually visit Chris’s house, he wasn’t there. Even if Howie decided to go on a whim, Chris wouldn’t be on his house, always leaving a message that he wouldn’t be back for a while.

Howie had even managed to corner Joey, and make him get tickets for Hairspray the same night that Chris was going to be there, and while Joey, and Howie, and even JC had managed to be there, Chris had called at the last minute to say that something had came up with the band.

If he referred to Nigels 11 or Sureshot, Howie wasn’t sure.

Howie blamed the lack of Chris in his life for the fact that he had been disappointed when Manband’s premiere had been put back to August. It was also, at least in Howie’s mind, the reason why he had actually circled the premiere of the show on all the calendars in his house, AJ’s house, Nick’s house and -during a short visit- Kevin’s meeting agenda. Kevin still hadn’t forgiven him for that.

It was also the one reason, or at least the one reason he would admit to, for TVIOing the first show, downloading a copy from the Web, and checking Sureshot’s MySpace page for updates.

He had no excuse for having the first song they had released on his iPod. But he loved Chris’s voice, so that was good enough for him.

Howie was getting ready for a lazy day of doing nothing, a week before the real hard part of the promotion for the Backstreet Boys’ new album began now that they had managed to come to an agreement with Jive, when his cellphone rang to the tune of “Backstreet’s Back”. Back when he had bought that cellphone, Chris had added tones for all their friends, so Howie would always smile when the different tunes came in.

“Hi, Nick, what are you doing?” He answered, not even bothering to look at the phone number. Nick was “Backstreet’s Back”, AJ was “I Still”, Brian was “Sympathy for the Devil”, Kevin was the Munchkin’s song from “The Wizard of Oz” (something that only made sense in Chris’s head but Howie couldn’t bring himself to change it) and Chris himself was “Say you Will.”

“Watching your loser boyfriend on TV,” Nick answered, laughing. “He and the others are on ‘The View’ right now.”

“You’re just jealous because ‘The View’ never invited you during ‘House of Carters’,” Howie answered as he turned on the TV. After his fight with Chris, Nick had at first refused to take sides, but as time passed, he kept urging Howie to break things up with Chris. It was strange, since as far as Howie knew, Nick was still friends with Chris.

“Not jealous; relieved,” Nick said, still laughing. “You watching?”

“Yeah, I am,” Howie admitted. They were showing the clip where Miss Kate told the guys that they were going to sing in the Magic Orlando game. When that was over, the camera panned to the group entering the stage. Chris looked good, thinner and happy, wearing a black shirt with white designs. For a moment, Howie felt as if time had wound back, Chris looked so young smiling.

He barely noticed Jeff, Rich and Bryan there, although he was happy to see that Rich looked healthy despite the fact that Chris had told him that there were a couple of close calls during filming.

It was strange looking at the show, as somehow, the questions being asked were a little harder than what Howie was used to. Rich’s health, the fall of boybands, and finally, the big question of how much money they had.

The camera focused on Jeff, but when the camera turned back to them all, Howie saw Chris closing his cellphone quickly before the camera turned back to Bryan and they talked about his drinking problem.

“I can’t believe Chris did a party,” Nick commented snarkily into Howie’s ear. “When AJ came back from rehab we…”

“We didn’t live in the same house, Nick,” Howie sighed. He had heard Chris blame himself for Bryan’s relapse a lot in Chris’s night calls, and he didn’t want to go through the same thing with Nick. “Honestly, it could have happened to us too.”

“You defend him too much,” Nick said, but Howie couldn’t hear anger in his voice.

“I have money,” Chris said on the TV, and Howie turned his attention in time to see Joan move, sit on Chris’s lap and, to the laughter of everyone, exchange watches with Chris. That made Howie laugh, Chris was always making everyone happy with his jokes, even if at times, it seemed like too much.

He waited for Nick to say something, but the other end of the line was eerily silent.

“Seriously, though, Joan, I’m sort of engaged,” Chris said, and Howie felt his heart drop to his heels.

“Wait, wait, that’s news,” Joan said, still laughing. “You didn’t mention that in the show, or ever, when did that happen, who’s the lucky lady?”

Jeff, Bryan and Rich snickered, and Howie could swear that Nick was laughing too. But it was too far away. He was too focused on Chris to hear anything else.

“Ok, first, I want to say that I’m not copycatting Lance, right?” Chris said, the camera centered completely on him. “I’ve been with this particular person for almost seven years now, only it didn’t really came up because I was sort of trying to protect his privacy, such as it is.”

“You’re not serious,” Joan said, still laughing as if Chris was telling a joke. Howie’s heart stopped. It wouldn’t be the first time Chris did that in front of the cameras. He had once said that he was dating Lance, only to make Howie jealous. If anyone could come out without coming out, that was Chris.

“Well,” Chris looked down, and Howie realized that Chris was looking at his open cellphone.

“It’s up to you, Howie,” Nick said on his cell, suddenly serious. “I’ve got Brian on the line, and he’s with AJ who is text messaging Chris. If you don’t want him to say your name, he won’t.”

Howie swallowed, trying to think. He had hammered Chris so much about this, and there he was, coming out, even if it could still be a joke, on national TV. And Howie knew that Chris could still make a joke out of it, even if he said Howie’s name. But for one brief moment, Howie would have the fact that Chris had acknowledged him in front of all the American viewing public.

“Tell him to do it,” he whispered, not trusting his own voice.

“Well, Chris? Who is the lucky guy?” Joan insisted, obviously still not believing he was serious. But Chris smiled at something, before closing up his cell again. It was a very subtle movement, that Howie wasn’t sure anyone else would’ve noticed.

“Howie D,” Chris said, completely calm. But his smile was so big, that Howie could swear it was shinning. “You know? We had a bit of a Romeo and Juliet thing going for a while, with him being in Backstreet Boys and me in *N Sync, but things got better. We’ll be having our seventh anniversary in September.”

There was a flurry of questions, and yelling from the audience when Chris said that, but Howie could see that there was no surprise on Bryan, Rich or Jeff’s faces. Chris must have told them at some point, and while Howie felt a little hurt at that, he couldn’t feel betrayed. He had been the one who insisted that they could come out as a couple.

Finally, the noise stopped, and Joan raised her hand, looking very amused. “Ok, lover boy, prove it,” she said, still smiling. “We’ve got Howie’s phone in our list since he was a host once, so we can call him and ask him.”

“Sure, go ahead,” Chris smiled back. “It won’t be the first time I make someone in a show call him.”

It took a moment, but finally, Howie’s work phone rang. It took a longer moment for Howie to react, to the point that Nick whispered on his ear “C’mon dude, answer them.”

“H’llo?” He managed to whisper, not losing his other cell, as he needed Nick’s moral support. He then remembered that Nick was on a conference call with him and Brian, and that Brian was with AJ, who was on line with Chris and the whole situation seemed like out from ‘Friends’.

They only needed a monkey.

“Hi, Howie, how are you? This is Joan, from ‘The View’. I’m so sorry to call you like this, but we have a small question that only you can answer,” Joan said, her shrill voice echoing from the TV. On the screen, Howie could see that Chris’s confident smile wavered a little.

“Hi, Joan, happy to be of any help. What do you need?” Howie said, trying to keep his ‘Backstreet promo’ voice. He hadn’t been using that one as much as he wanted lately.

“Well, Howie, we have some great guests in today’s show. Some of your old friends from the boyband days. You know, Bryan from Color Me Badd, Jeff from 98 Degrees, Rich from LFO and of course, Chris, from *N Sync.”

“Hi guys,” Howie said, keeping with his role. He could do it. If Chris could be calm admitting to their relationship, he could do the same.

“Hi, Howie,” the four singers chorused.

“Well, Howie, the thing is, Chris has just floored everyone here by telling us that he’s been hiding a sweetheart from the media. Now, we do want to believe Chris, but we wanted to know what do you say to the fact that he says that you’ve been going out for seven years.”

“It’s not true,” Howie answered, smiling a little as he saw Chris’s shocked face. So he continued, quickly. “If we count the years in Valencia, it’s closer to ten.”

“Hey! We broke up after college,” Chris interrupted, now smiling. “So, it’s a new count for when we started going out again.”

“So it is true?” Joan insisted. “You and Chris are together?”

“Yeah, we are,” Howie’s smile grew, as he heard Nick’s yell of triumph on the cellphone. “He’s not joking this time.”

“I never joke about us,” Chris interrupted, looking, strangely, very serious. “In fact… Can we open the camera a bit?”

That last part was obviously at the cameraman, as indeed the view shifted from a closeup to Chris, to a wide view of all the band, Joan and her cohost.

Then, to Howie’s surprise, Chris lowered himself to one knee. Howie winced, as he knew that after the surgery, Chris’s knees still hurt sometimes. For a moment, Chris seemed to fumble through his pants pockets to finally bring out a small black box, making Howie’s breath stop.

“I know it’s corny, so shut up,” Chris said to his snickering bandmates. “And it’s important to Howie so, what do you say, man? Can you make an honest dork out of me? It’s legal in Canada.”

Howie chuckled loudly, even while feeling his face flush. It was a good thing he was alone in his house, as he was pretty sure that Nick would be teasing him for weeks.

“Stop making a fuss, Chris,” Howie finally managed to say. “Of course I will. Now go back to your interview and come home as soon as you can, ok?”

A week later, and after a few discussions over which house was the coolest, they decided to keep both houses, as each had its merits, but they would also start hunting for one they could call theirs.

It was about then that Lance sent them a fruit basket, an advance copy of his book, and a note that read:

“It was about time, you guys. Congratulations.”

And that was how Howie D. ended up getting married at the end of 2007, thanks to Mission:Manband.


End file.
